


be brave and don’t look back

by skyqueenclarke



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Rey Skywalker lives on sort of, The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyqueenclarke/pseuds/skyqueenclarke
Summary: It’s a name chosen for hope and freedom, by a girl in desert sands with chains in her wrists for a boy she would love beyond anything.Or-How a name lives on.





	be brave and don’t look back

When Poe Dameron introduces himself, all suave charm and smiles at her name, she assumes Finn has said something, told stories about her, that he’s an exception.

He’s not.

In her first days with the Rebels, everybody crammed into a tiny ship, Rey soon learns she gained a reputation – she hears them whisper about her, her abilities, her fight with Kylo Ren, her time with Luke Skywalker. After a while, the bravest ones ask about him, the elusive Jedi Master, though nobody dares to do it when Leia is on the room.

It reminds her of what Luke said, about legends, about how your story can gain a life your own. She thinks she understands a little better, as people’s eyes follow her, making up stories and lives for her, making her actions grand when she barely understands them herself.

She avoids telling details, either way, feeling like everything – Luke, Ben, the broken lightsaber still kept with her things – are too private to share.

Except with Leia, of course, who deservers her story at least.

The woman closes her eyes, misses a breath, when Rey tells her about Kylo – about Ben, standing beside her, telling her to bury the past.

 _I’m sorry_ , she starts to say, but Leia interrupts her, a soft smile, a thousand losses in her eyes.

“Don’t be. I can’t fault him for wanting something I’ve wished so much myself”.

She must see the surprise on Rey’s face, because it makes her laugh.

“To this day, child”, and here Leia takes Rey’s hands, holds them close like she’ll disappear, “I still can’t decide if the name Organa or the name Skywalker is the one that brings me the most pain. I’ve often wished I could get rid of both”.

It will stay with Rey forever, the way the general’s eyes lose focus for a minute, fixated on something behind Rey, and she wonders, not for the first time, how many ghosts Leia can see.

(is her bother one of them, now?)

“I’ll call you just Leia, then”, is all Rey can offer, and Leia’s smile is kind but her eyes are harsh.

“No. The past can’t be erased, it’ll do no good to ignore it. I’m afraid we must simply build something from it that will bring us peace”.

 

  
It starts, like so many things do, with bureaucracy.

They don’t have exact records of everyone in the Rebellion, because that’s just inviting hackers and problem, but they do have a system to organize it, and complete names are part of it. Rey doesn’t learn about this until

Finn stops dead one day, confused, as the permission for “Finn Snow” room comes through.

They investigate and learn that last names are required, and when they had done Finn’s, the girl doing his file had added a random one – it’s what they called orphans in my planet, she tries to explain, blushing furiously and stammering but Finn just laughs it off.

(there’s a shadow in his eyes, and she has to wonder if he had thought, just for a moment, _do I have a family after all?_ and understands all too well)

He asks about hers before she say anything, and the girl freezes, says she doesn’t know, but Rey can see her name in the records behind her, right before Finn’s.

_Skywalker, Rey._

She pretends she doesn’t see it, and drags Finn from there, but it echoes in her mind, generations of blood and hope and love, and now her, forcing her way into a story that it’s not hers.

(it’s funny, the things that stay with you, and Ben’s eyes, telling her she does belong – it’s an image hard to erase)

She asks Rose, instead, who knows the Rebels and will be discreet, her eyes always shining with hero-worship even after weeks together.

 _It’s just that you’re his heir, in a way_ , Rose tries to explain, talks about Force and Hope and Jedi as if they are sacred characters of a millennial story.

(and they are, of course)

 _Heir of what?,_ Rey privately wonders.

They look at her and see Luke Skywalker and they looked at Luke Skywalker and saw a Hero, but there was only a lonely man full of ghosts and there’s now there’s only a lost girl, still chasing a home that will never happen.

(lost children from desert worlds, looking for family and belonging by chasing legends and lies, and maybe there are not that different after all)

 

  
It’s a silly inside joke, Rey things, that surely will soon be forgotten, but standing before the Empire’s guards, blood in her mouth, another dead rebel at her feet, it comes to her mind fresh again.

She’s surrounded by guards, and one of them slaps her face, _what’s your name,_ and she pushes them all away, the Force expanding until their weapons fall and their bodies hit the floor.

 _Rey Skywalker,_ she says, proud, remembering the way it felt to hold the blue lightsaber and feel herself connected to something for the first time in her life, _and you will not stop us._

They escape, as Rebels do, and they all heard her claim the name now, so she searches Leia’s eye first, and the woman is not smiling, but she lets Rey talk first.

“He was a silly old man”, it’s what first escapes her mouth, surrounded by the rebels, that gasp aloud. She thinks about slapping herself for a moment, but Leia laughs, bright and clear, in a way Rey didn’t know she could.

“But his name meant hope, for them”, _for me,_ it’s what she means, of course, and she thinks Leia understands when her eyes soften. “I just thought… it could mean that again”.

Leia is quiet for a while, and the silence around them seems to breath, and Rey can feel, the woman’s heart beating, the weight of the name that it’s hers to own and hate and love and give.

“My father was a slave, did you know?”, and there’s murmuring to that, Rose’s sharp intake of breath, but Leia waits for Rey to shake her head before she continues. “The Jedi freed him, but he already had that name before they met him. We never learned his mother’s name, Luke and I, but apparently she chose Skywalker for them”.

(a lie, of course – but Shmi was something whispered by the Force in a dream she and Luke shared, and too private and precious to allow the word to make a legend out of it)

(hidden in that sentence, another terrible truth – the Jedi never bothered to free her)

 _To walk the skies,_ they all hear Rose whisper, though obviously she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. Leia’s eyes don’t leave Rey’s but she smiles wider.

“Yes, a name of hope and freedom, I think, for those that will not be owned. Maybe that’s how we should all remember it”.

It’s a permission and a blessing all in one, and everyone pretends they don’t see Rey’s eyes water as Leia turns away.

(Rey dreams that night, of a little boy who once loudly said he would free all the slaves - she wakes up with tears in her face and the smell of burning surrounding her, with Leia beside her bed, her eyes soft)

( _I’m afraid this is also what it means to be a Skywalker,_ she doesn’t say and Rey hears it all the same. _Hope and freedom, but the first one far more often than the second_ )

 

  
Ben mentions it only once.

He appears rarely now, but it’s impossible to ignore that she still hears his steps beside hers, can hear a soft breath, can still feel, at times, the burning anger of loneliness.

(she should probably start calling him Kylo, one of these days)

He doesn’t say it directly, but she can see it in the line of his mouth, the way his eyes darken, _I hear I’m hunting a Skywalker now._

She knows he hates the legacy for all the it brought him pain and weight, too heavy for little boy lost in darkness. But she can’t wonder if he hates her, for wearing it so much better than he had.

( _my grandfather’s lightsaber,_ she had heard before, the possessive tone shining through, but even now, broken in two, it still belongs to her)

 _Hope and freedom,_ it’s what she whispers, like a prayer, and he disappears on a flash on anger and pain.

(she hears in the Force, just for a moment, _Ben Skywalker,_ and knows she wasn’t the one to think it)

 

  
Everywhere, the children come first.

The man and woman of old, that still follow the princess of a planet that no longer exists – they come as well, of course, few and far between, with no weapons or ships that would’ve allowed them to come sooner.

But, still, always, the children come first, orphans and poor ones, and always the slaves amidst them, following the whispers of a rebellion, risking death and pain for a chance to see their symbols, hears their stories, offer their hands and ears in every way they can.

Rey can feel in her bones the ones that already have the spark inside them, that talk to Force as easily as they talk to her.

They have different versions of different stories, and Leia listens to them all, especially the ones that talk of a dark whisper that follows them, the way the world expands and moves and feels too big sometimes.

 _Like Skywalker and you,_ they all say, in marvel with the power inside of them despite everything, and Rey can’t help but wonder if, in another life, it would have felt like a marvelous possibility rather than a terrible burden.

Leia sends them Rey’s way, and the girl would hate her for it, if she didn’t wonder if Leia saw her son in each one of the children.

There’s not much to teach that they don’t already know, but Rey won’t make Luke’s mistakes, imagine she can judge their lives and futures for them. She talks of the Force, of Balance and Life, tries to tell them the words she can still hear Luke say – _not a tool, not for the Jedi, not for floating rocks._

Everywhere, for everyone, for Balance.

(it’s an important lesson, and one she’s glad she’s learned, even if she knows Luke thought that it wasn’t enough)

(it is. It has to be)

 

  
The children change things.

Some leave, of course, with their families, or on ships that offer the promise of a better life, but most stay, and it reminds them all what they’re fighting for, to hear the children’s laughter and their tiny footsteps on still mostly empty halls.

The Rebellion might have turned them away, once a upon a time, in times of war and fighting, thinking themselves to grand and important for children to understand. But they’re barely standing as it is, and can’t afford to turn away those looking for home.

(avoiding one of the mistakes of the past, perhaps, though it’s hard to say it just yet)

They follow her around most days, showing her tricks and telling her stories, encouraged by the smiles she can’t help but give, Finn’s fascination with their abilities, Poe’s interest in their creativity.

They push into her life, sleep at her quarters when they can and playfully steal her food, and it’s a wonder, the way she learns to let them in, to share and love, the way they make up a new family for lost children who are all nobody.

(sometimes, at night, she catches herself thinking it feels almost like belonging)

 

  
“You should change it”.

Finn looks up only for a moment, confused, not paying much attention – if he had, he would’ve seen her nervous hands, shaking with the weight of what she’s about to offer.

“What you’re talking about?”, and she takes his hand, before she loses her courage.

“Your name”, and it calms her down, to look upon him, this first boy who looked at her and saw somebody special. Wars and fights and incredible feats later, and he still seems to think her smile is the most incredible about her.

“Finn Skywalker, I think”, and he freezes for only a moment, the smile spreading before he can help it.

“Are you sure?”

And he looks so excited, to share into the story and wonder of this legend, that Rey can’t help but think of that little boy of her dreams, of twin children who lived missing someone they couldn’t reach, of a boy who looked up and saw a green lightsaber above his head and destroyed the world. For a second, she considers taking it back.

"Yes", she says instead and hugs him tighter, because she can’t let the past die but she can reshape it, make it a better mirror for the future they’re trying to build.

A name might not be much, but it’s a start.

 

 

General Leia Organa dies on a day like any other, and it should be wrong, how terribly ordinary that day is, except is fitting, that her death belongs only to herself, when so much of her life belonged to something else.

(that night, had she been awake, Rey would’ve felt the whisper of bond stronger than life, as a brother came to bring his sister home)

There is nowhere to bury her. She is burned, like Skywalkers before her, and the entire Rebellion tries to stay put together as admirals and generals and commanders speak for her.

Poe Dameron, newly made Admiral by Leia’s will, screams himself horse, and has to be dragged away by Finn.

Rey is a child of the desert, and knows there’s no point in screaming for the dead. Her grief is mostly silent and soft, surrounded by children and pretending she can’t see Ben Solo in the corner of her eye.

(he, who is made of screams and tantrums and fire, is entirely silent, curled on himself like a child)

There’s a terrible weight in the air, and they all know nothing will ever be the same again. There’ll never be anyone to carry the Rebellion the way she did, so they’ll have to learn, adapt, make something new of themselves as there’s no point to trying to be anything like Leia.

The General had left her Rebellion everything, of course, except for one single item, that an Admiral presents Rey with shaking hands. It’s a beautiful necklace with strange markings, that one of the children recognizes as from Tatooine.

There’s no letter to explain it, no old story of Leia to make sense of it. Still, as Rey touches it, she sees a little boy giving a gift to a beautiful girl and a woman with flowers in her hair, her eyes like Leia’s, her smile like Luke’s.

A family token, for Rey, who is not her daughter, who will likely kill her only son.

 _It’s a japor snippet, for good fortune,_ Even says, and can’t understand why it makes Rey choke. It’s a weight she doesn’t know if she can bear, to be the heir of this family’s pain and love and hope.

The children surround her, curious, and it grounds her, a little. One of them holds her hand, and her eyes are a beautiful shade of blue, not unlike Luke Skywalker’s was.

(a sudden thought – Tatooine is matrilineal, and Anakin’s Skywalker’s daughter is dead. There’s no woman to keep his legacy alive)

(even more terribly, no woman to carry Shmi’s legacy)

 _Would you like a last name, Amee?,_ is what finally escapes her mouth.

Amee smiles, and the Force surrounds them, and Rey puts the necklace on. It’s a gift made from love, and she’ll cherish it like that. A different point of view from a past that will reflect a future worth fighting for.

 _Come Skywalkers,_ she says, steading her voice, finding the Force that binds them all. _We have work to do._

 

  
In a past Rey’ll never see, old beings who thought they knew everything talked about _chosen_ and _balance_ and _skywalker_ as if the Force had written the story with perfect lines, threads in a tapestry they thought themselves to be the center of.

And in a future she can’t quite grasp yet, that name of prophecy and blood will spread with no rhyme or reason, not planned or foretold, from those children whose heads she touches to other lost children, to the poor and the slaves and the lonely.

(to Stormtroopers, who whisper among themselves, _to be free like Finn Skywalker_ )

A gift and a burden to keep a legacy alive, to make it into something new.

 _Be brave, and don’t look back,_ these children will repeat to one another, as Rey says to them, and they won’t know that Shmi Skywalker once told her son the same thing as she watched him go and knew, perhaps, that the next time they saw each other would be the last.

In this future she can’t quite see yet, Kylo Ren will whisper, with blood on his mouth and pain in his heart, _hope and freedom,_ and she’ll be the one to correct him, to shake her head, and hold her lightsaber tighter.

 _And love,_ she’ll say, a lesson thought by a Rebellion made of broken people, by lost children, by a necklace for good fortune.

(she’ll throw him the necklace, in hope still, and won’t know that’s what Leia had hoped in her last moments)

She’ll understand it better then, see not threads or cobwebs, not fine strokes she can trace and clearly see where they lead, but like lines in the sand, like the mirror in the island, a never-ending circle of movement and desire, light and dark looking for Balance wherever they can find it.

In the present, where past is unknown and future uncertain, Rey can only build herself a new lightsaber, let Kylo Ren listen in, and stand tall, armed with hope and love, ready to fight.

(one day, they’ll ask, _what did you fight for?_ , and she’ll be able to say with certainty, _for the one thing that truly matters_ )

( _for freedom_ )

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell Rey Skywalker - in whatever way - is something they'll have to pry from my cold dead hands?


End file.
